At a time when headlines seem dominated by violence and tragedy, a piece of good news is very welcome. On Monday night the Solar Impulse aircraft landed in Abu Dhabi from where it set off in March last year.
Some 42,000 kilometers later, this solar-powered plane has circled the globe, without using a drop of fuel. Flown in turn by two pilots, the longest stretch of the journey lasted nearly five days as the fragile craft with its 72-meter wingspan, wider than that of a Boing 747, traveled across the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii. The batteries that drove the four electric engines giving an average speed of 70 kilometers per hour were charged during the daylight hours by a dense array of photovoltaic cells along the top of the wings. This allowed the plane to keep flying during the night.
All through that long Pacific crossing the pilot was stuck in the cramped cabin unable to move about and being obliged to seek only quick naps while the aircraft flew on autopilot. But in fact he was not alone. A team of technicians thousands of miles away at the mission base in Monaco constantly monitored the aircraft itself and the weather around it.
Therefore, this was not simply an epic achievement of human guts and endurance, it was also a stunning feat of technology. All around the world, not least here in the Kingdom, research is progressing to better harness the massive energy from the sun. The pace of technological development continues to be swift.
For sure, there was something slightly absurd about this ungainly solar-powered aircraft pottering around the globe. It was not just storms but even strong headwinds that caused some of the 17 stages of the journey to be postponed repeatedly as the Solar Impulse team waited the optimum conditions to launch their delicate craft.
But from this extraordinary achievement has come an immense store of new knowledge. As other technologies have demonstrated, what is cutting edge today is very likely to become the norm tomorrow. Already aircraft designers are looking seriously at using photovoltaics on the wings of conventionally-powered jets. As with automobiles, it is likely that it will not be long before hybrid aircraft will be taking to the skies, with solar energy being used to power onboard electrical systems, thus boosting the fuel efficiency of their jet engines.
This project has taken years and many millions of dollars to bring off successfully. But it demonstrates once again the massive dividends of cooperation and dedication toward a common goal. It is a tragic reality that there were parts of the world over which the Solar Impulse flew which are being torn apart by savage violence motivated by bigotry, fanaticism and greed.
These brutal conflicts have arisen largely because there has been no common goal, no ability to compromise, no willingness to seek solutions and no desire to reach agreement on anything but the blinkered determination to carry on with more violence, with the sole ambition to kill and destroy a world that could be so very different if peace and stability returned. Syria and Iraq are examples of the devastation that nihilist bigotry brings about. Solar Impulse is a shining and lofty demonstration that it does not have to be this way.
